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For immediate release.
Contact Michael J. Cohen
360-378-6313
nature@ interisland.net
West Coast University offers state of the art learning-with-nature courses, funding and curricula from Project NatureConnect.
Grant Program enables qualified students of all nations, including First Nations, to learn how to think in globally unifying ways for the betterment of themselves humankind and the natural world.
Fund raising opportunities for individuals and organizations are available through natural system sensory programs that strengthen environmentally sound relationships and well being.
Got Nature?
How to Deal with the Underlying Source of Your Personal and Global Discontents.-Michael J. Cohen..
When I was a child living in New York City, as I returned home from school one day, some bullies in the schoolyard roughed me up saying, "Kike!* You jewboy, you killed Christ." In tears, as I continued home I was drawn to an alternative path through a wooded park by the railroad. Things were peaceful in that little grove and by the time I emerged from it, I felt much better.
Next day, when I asked my teacher why the park made me feel better, she said it was, "Because it took you away from your problems." But, significantly, like most other people I have ever known, my teacher never told me just what it was that little natural area took me to. This is because most of us don't know what "to" is. In our nature-separated society that important piece of information has been omitted from our awareness, socialization and education. This is a huge, critical omission.
What we seldom learn about parks and other natural areas is that visiting them is more than just an escape from reality. Our nature-separated society leaves us unaware that natural areas also revive us because, to sustain its perfection, nature continually balances and restores itself. We are part of nature. In an attractive natural setting we connect with nurturance from our sensory origins in the regenerative, non-polluting way nature works. Often this happens subconsciously but the important thing is that it happens and we benefit.
Elements of nature make us feel good and revive us in attractive natural areas because nature's air, water, soil, sunlight, species, community, beauty, grace and renewing powers are nurturing essences of our physical, emotional and spiritual self. We learn to take for granted that in nature, the vibrancy of natural systems brings into our mind and heart their recuperative ways and intelligence within and around us. This helps us enjoy and think with the means nature uses to produce its optimums of life, diversity, cooperation and purification. Nature produces these optimums without producing garbage or our insanity because in unadulterated nature everything belongs. Nothing is left out. No 'kikes' there; things are neither labeled nor abandoned. Transformation, not rejection is how nature works. That's a way to describe unconditional love; that's how and why nature supports us when we visit attractive natural areas. It makes us think and feel better because our psyche and spirit are more natural and whole there.
It is urgent that we recognize our great personal and global problems result from our thinking not consciously recognizing that supportive respect for nature is a restorative and active part of life. To improve the quality of our lives we must learn how to genuinely reconnect our mind with nature so that, like organic composting, we can let nature transform and recycle our mental garbage into greater well being for the whole of life. That's the rest of the story about visiting a natural area, the organic part of it. To our loss, very few of us know it.
We omit nature from our thinking because our society not only prides itself on its conquest of nature but our socialization/education teaches us the false prejudice, "For survival we must dominate and subdue nature." We learn to exploit rather than cooperate with and embrace nature's ways around and within us. That prejudice explains why openly enjoying or revering natural systems, including our natural senses often earns us the name of "escapist, flaky, tree hugging, hippy environmentalist."
"From the masses to the 'masses,'
The most Revolutionary consciousness is to be found,
Among the most ruthlessly exploited classes:
Animals, trees, water, air, grasses."
- Gary Snyder
As I worked my way through elementary school I watched that little woodland park by the railroad disappear. Progress "improved" it by converting it into a shopping center and apartment house. What I didn't see was that my natural way of thinking and feeling was part of nature and that it was being similarly converted during this period. I unknowingly learned to overlook that I was being programmed to a way of thinking that destroyed natural systems because conquering nature is 'normal' and applauded in our civilization. It's the "in" thing to do to improve ourselves and the world. And, it's excessively rewarded to help us overcome our sadness over our loss of nature.
Our society teaches us to spend, on average, over 99 percent of our thinking and 95 percent of our time indoors, separated from authentic nature's balanced ways and guiding signals. This results in us losing consciousness of ourselves and the natural world as intercommunicating, seamless natural systems. The separation stressfully rips our thinking from nature's recuperative and aesthetic benefits while we are at home, work and school. We learn, instead, to destructively relate to nature as a "resource." Many financial and social rewards goad and psychologically addict us to keep doing this. We feel we can't stop, even when we know we should, even when we want to because we know it's stupid not to.
Although the disconnection of our mind from nature's balanced ways underlies our disorders and discontents, we are conditioned to crave, rather than correct, this separation. As we purchase things that help us overcome the discomfort produced by our disconnection, we fuel our economy and we depend upon the shallow happiness of status and false security. A vast majority of us do not recognize that our nature-disconnection is a major source of our dilemmas. Short circuited, we remain disconnected, we think those who do connect are eccentric, and the world increasingly goes around in crazy untrustable circles.
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. "
- Benjamin FranklinAccompanied by others at Project NatureConnect, and the program I founded at the National Audubon Society Expedition Institute, since 1952, I have focused a major part of my life researching and developing an organic sensory science, a Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP) that enables us to genuinely reconnect our mind with how nature works in natural areas as well as in people. Readily available, NSTP helps us tap our thinking into authentic nature and thereby tenfold strengthen nature's balance and healing powers in ourselves, others and the environment. It enables us to let nature's recovery energies help us deal with our addictive dysfunctions and our emotional bonds to detrimental ways of thinking and acting.
Today, funds developed by NSTP economics make it possible for anybody who appreciates nature to learn and teach NSTP and enjoy its organic benefits to themselves, to others and the to environment. And today, the value of teaching this science is increasingly recognized and supported through many universities, most recently West Coast University in the Republic of Panama, accredited by ICDE, the global accrediting agency recognized by UNESCO & UNO.
Maybe there is hope. After all, anyone who has enjoyed a good experience with nature -backcountry, backyard or with their pet, or with the wind, sea or stars- knows nature's potential for increasing our peace of mind and our reverence for all of life. All we need to do is trust our good experiences in nature and learn to use NSTP to help us incorporate them in our daily life.
Isn't now the time to produce and enjoy the organic rewards of greater personal, professional and environmental sanity rather than continue to suffer our dysfunctions and discontents?
- Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D.
Faculty, West Coast University
*Leo Rosten says, "The word kike was born on Ellis Island, when Jewish immigrants who were illiterate (or could not use Roman-English letters), when asked to sign the entry-forms with the customary 'X,' refused -- and instead made a circle. For the Jewish immigrants, an 'X' was an evil sign, representing both the horrors of crucifixion and the sign of their (Christian) oppressors. The Yiddish word for 'circle' is kikel (pronounced KY - kel), and for 'little circle,' kikeleh. Before long the immigration inspectors were calling anyone who signed with an 'O' instead of an 'X' a kikel or kikeleh or kikee or, finally and succinctly, kike."
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.... For immediate release:
Contact Michael J. Cohen
360-378-6313
nature@ interisland.nethin
West Coast University offers state of the art learning-with-nature courses, funding and curricula from Project NatureConnect.
Grant Program enables qualified students of all nations, including First Nations, to learn how to think in globally unifying ways for the betterment of themselves humankind and the natural world.
Fund raising opportunities for individuals and organizations are available through natural system sensory programs that strengthen environmentally sound relationships and well being.
Panama City, Panama. March 5, 2005. Dr. Sarfraz Lloyd, President of West Coast University (WCU) in the Republic of Panama, today announced the decision of WCU to affiliate with and offer the Education and Counseling with Nature learning programs and coursework of Project NatureConnect as part of WCU's goal to contribute in the development of new methodologies and technologies for international education and training.The task for affiliated centres like Project NatureConnect (PNC) is to assist students who are interested to study flexible learning methodology, training, and continuing education, to enhance human minds in their home countries with minimum possible fee structure. PNC is an Integrated Ecology Department of the Institute of Global Education located in Friday Harbor, Washington, USA under the direction of Dr. Michael J. Cohen.
PNC provides a tool to establish an organic way of knowing that helps us overcome contemporary troubles and dysfunctions. It enables us to enjoy the important contributions of more than fifty natural senses that our excessively indoor lives subdue in our consciousness. Students learn how to increase sanity and wellness, and reduce environmental and social welfare budgets, by genuinely tapping contemporary thinking into the balance, grace and regenerative powers of nature.
Cohen says, "The innovative PNC process enables us to think and relate like nature's peace, cooperation and renewal energies work. It helps us increase sustainable cooperation by binding our mind with the restorative way natural systems, without producing garbage, provide love, support and well being throughout people and ecosystems."
Further information about the program is available from Dr. Cohen at 360-378-6313, nature@interisland.net, http://www.ecopsych.com
Dr. Cohen may be contacted at 360-378-6313, <nature@interisland.net>, www.ecopsych.com.
Dr. Lloyd may be contacted at <president@westcoastuniversity-edu.com> www.westcoastuniversity-edu.com
Materials, References and Links:
1. Scientific Breakthrough
http://www.ecopsych.com/insightmedia.html2. Press Release
http://www.ecopsych.com/insightrelease.html3. Introductory Article:
http://www.ecopsych.com/insight2005.html4. About M. J. Cohen:
http://www.ecopsych.com/mjcohen.html5. Fifty Three Natural Senses:
http://www.ecopsych.com/insight53senses.html6. Program Outcomes:
http://www.ecopsych.com/survey.html7. Grants Available:
http://www.ecopsych.com/2005grantapplic.html8. Organic Psychology:
http://www.organicpsychology.com/9. Books
http://www.ecopsych.com/books.html10. See top left-side panel for additional link topics and extended information
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INSTITUTE OF GLOBAL EDUCATION Special NGO consultant United Nations Economic and Social Council
PROJECT NATURECONNECT
Readily available, online, natural science tools
for the health of person, planet and spiritP.O. Box 1605, Friday Harbor, WA 98250
360-378-6313 <email> www.ecopsych.com
in consultation withWEST COAST UNIVERSITY P.O.Box 2411, 9A, Panama City,
Republic of Panama.
<email> www.westcoastuniversity-edu.com
ORGANIC ADVANCED ECOPSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION
The Natural Systems Thinking Process
Dr. Michael J. Cohen, Director
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All programs start with the Orientation Course contained in the book
The Web of Life Imperative.
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